“Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person.” Albert Einstein

Book Review- Honey for a Child’s Heart -The Imaginative Use of Books in Family Life by Glady Hunt

This was a great little book that had been recommended in a couple of homeschooling books I had. It is paen to the importance of good literature in forming the imagination and the soul of children.

It has chapters outlining what makes a good book for children, the importance of fantasy and realism for children and also a section on poetry. It wouldn’t be a good guidebook if it didn’t recommend how to make a good book selection for your child and if that wasn’t enough the author Gladys Hunt was kind enough to include a reading list at the end. The selections she includes are pure gold and include Charles Williams, George McDonald, C.S. Lewis, and Tolkien along with a host of other classic writers so you you should feel that you are on safe ground when you to take this reading list to your favorite bookstore. In fact, I’m going to use it tomorrow when I head up to McKay’s books in Tennessee.

I love children’ s literature myself and I find one of the best things about homeschooling is rereading a lot of the books I read in my own childhood along with relearning stuff I never got around to in my own faulty education.

Before I close, Hunt writes that a “busy schedule is the enemy of reading”. I know that I have been spreading myself too thin lately and I find that it is exceedingly difficult to find the time to sit and read a book for pure pleasure, sipping it and savoring and devouring it with my full attention and being. O brave new modern world of the ipod and the satellite TV, of the youtube and the podcast. But even without these modern conveniences it must have always been extremely hard to devote precious leisure time to reading and cultivating the mind. It is doubly challenging now with the rise of the internet. What to do? Get up early? Break away from the power grid? Get another job?